Reviewing again the arguments advanced in favor of the study of the ancient languages, we are obliged to say that in the main and as applied to the present, they are wholly devoid of force. In so far as the aims which this study theoretically pursues are still worthy of attainment, they appear to us as altogether too narrow, and are surpassed in this only by the means employed. As almost the sole, indisputable result of this study we must count the increase of the student's skill and precision in expression. One inclined to be uncharitable might say that our gymnasiums and classical academies turn out men who can speak and write, but, unfortunately, have little to write or speak about. Of that broad, liberal view, of that famed universal culture, which the classical curriculum is supposed to yield, serious words need not be lost. This culture might, perhaps, more properly be termed the contracted or lopsided culture. * * * * * While considering the study of languages we threw a few side glances at mathematics and the natural sciences. Let us now inquire whether these, as branches of study, cannot accomplish much that is to be attained in no other way. I shall meet with no contradiction when I say that without at least an elementary mathematical and scientific education a man remains a total stranger in the world in which he lives, a stranger in the civilisation of the time that bears him. Whatever he meets in nature, or in the industrial world, either does not appeal to him at all, from his having neither eye nor ear for it, or it speaks to him in a totally unintelligible language. A real understanding of the world and its civilisation, however, is not the only result of the study of mathematics and the physical sciences. Much more essential for the preparatory school is the _formal_ cultivation which comes from these studies, the strengthening of the reason and the judgment, the exercise of the imagination. Mathematics, physics, chemistry, and the so-called descriptive sciences are so much alike in this respect, that, apart from a few points, we need not separate them in our discussion.